Essex County Family Justice Center was established in direct response to the high rates of domestic violence homicides consistently being documented in the NJ State Police Uniform Crime Report for Essex County and Newark from 2004 to the present.

Domestic violence continues to impact Newark in 2019-2022 at alarming rates. New Jersey State Police’s 2019 Annual Domestic Violence Offense ("Uniform Crime") Report states there were 6,420 domestic violence assaults in Essex – New Jersey’s leader for these assaults, and 3,304 for Newark, (51.6% of the county’s total). Domestic violence assault represents complex trauma. Ongoing research confirms that untreated complex trauma leaves survivors exhibiting recurrent trauma-responses of dissociation, depression, anxiety, and PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disease), with reduced self-esteem and independence. Research also confirms that although marginalized groups are disproportionately impacted by violent trauma, Newark domestic violence survivors face almost insurmountable barriers to accessing trauma-specific services. Most domestic violence services focus on connecting victims to first levels of care, i.e. crisis intervention and stabilization. The victims Essex County Family Justice Center serves typically cannot access critically important, 2nd level, person-centered care.

As such, Essex County Family Justice Center is seeking to further address the mental health, complex trauma needs essential to their long-term recovery and healing. The Project will expand access for Essex County Family Justice Center’s most at-risk, marginalized clients to trauma-specific therapeutic services. Essex County Family Justice Center is ideally suited to implement this Project, as its operation reduces the barriers and fragmentation of conventional domestic violence services by co-locating multidisciplinary professionals at its facility, a one-stop intake function, and current, but limited, provision of therapeutic-services.